I don't think I've done this before, so this should be interesting. I'm going to list a few books that I (hopefully) haven't written about before, books that mean a lot to me and that I highly recommend. Some are very well-known, some...not so much.
I'm going to start with the first fantasy series I read, and still my favorite fantasy series to this day: The Belgariad, by David Eddings. It's a five-book epic fantasy series about a boy who has a great destiny. It's not exactly an original idea, and it's been called all kinds of clichés, but I love it. I was twelve when I first read it. I got the first two books, Pawn of Prophecy and Queen of Sorcery for my birthday along with Asimov's Foundation. I think I read Foundation first, but I really wasn't a big fan of it. But once I was done the first two Belgariad books, I was hooked. I couldn't wait for the next books to come out (they were still not all published yet), and I devoured each one as it was released. These were probably the first books I ever bought for myself.
The series is written for younger readers, but not stupid ones. Eddings had a good vocabulary, and he wasn't afraid to use it. And his world-building was amazing; Each nation is distinct, but believable. There are merchant-princes, Vikings, knights, plains nomads, Mongol hordes, and many others. Eddings spent a lot of time on his world-building before he ever wrote a word of the series, and it shows in the writing.
There is also a sequel series, The Malloreon, which is an admittedly inferior copy of the Belgariad, and two follow-up books after that, Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress that fill in a lot of backstory to the first series. There's also another book called the Rivan Codex, which is his background notes and a treatise on how to write epic fantasy, with an emphasis on world-building that really stirs the imagination. None of these are needed to enjoy the original five book series, but they're good reads as well.
Okay, next up, let's go to less-epic fantasy. D&D gamers are familiar with Appendix N, the list of books that inspired Gygax when he was creating the game. People are now reading those old authors a lot more than they did when I was younger, when you just couldn't find them on the shelves anymore. Thanks to the internet, they're much easier to find. One of those authors is a woman by the name of André Norton, and one of the books she wrote is Quag Keep. This is a notable book because it is the very first-ever D&D book. Now, is it great literature? Hell, no. Norton can and has written much, much better books. But this is a book about a D&D adventure. And it is the very first book that uses the now-common trope of 'gamers sucked into the world they are gaming in'. I mean, it was written in 1978; the Dungeon Masters Guide wasn't even released yet. I'm not sure the Players Handbook was out for that matter. So this is based on the earlier version of D&D, the white-box version.
Quag Keep has a typical assortment of fantasy characters; there are clerics, fighters, mages, elves, and...a lizard man? Well, I never saw that in the supplements to the game. But, that was back in the days when D&D really was a set of guidelines rather than rules. And lizard men were just as popular in fantasy literature as elves were, going back to Burroughs' Pellucidar stories. So, it makes sense to include such a character in a book about the game.
The worst aspect of Quag Keep is probably the ending, which is really, really rushed and breaks the crap out of the fourth wall with an army of sledgehammers. I won't spoil it, but trust me, it's a hell of a letdown after the rest of the adventure. Still, I will recommend the book for its historical value, as well as because the book between the first and last chapters is a fun romp in the spirit of the game.
Okay, so instead of giving reasons why I like these next few books, I'll just list them and let the reader find out why I enjoy them so much.
G.A. Henty, The Cat of Bubastes
H.R. Haggard, She
L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz
David Weber, On Basilisk Station
E.E. "Doc" Smith, The Skylark of Space
Garrett P. Serviss, A Columbus of Space
And, finally, I'll recommend my newest book, Apprentice, available now on Amazon.
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